The graveyards of “bad women”
On the pretext of acting to defend honour, criminals in Iraq are escaping punishment thanks to the power of tribes and local tradition

Asaad Al-Zalzali

While the focus of attention in Iraq is currently on the draft Personal Status Law – and the regression in women’s rights it threatens to usher in, including even allowing for marriage at the age of nine, which some religious sects in the country consider right – thousands of Iraqi women are being murdered on grounds of honour. Some are buried in secret graves – either as a means to expunge the “shame of sinful women” killed in crimes of honour, or to cover up cases of incest – by exploiting loopholes in Iraq’s criminal law which allows the victim to be handed over to her killer (the girl or woman to her guardian).

I can’t escape the stigma

“I carry this stigma from the day I was born to the day I die. That’s how my family see me.. Only God can help us, because that killer lives on and isn’t held accountable at all, even though he stabbed his sister all over her body.” Hanin (not her real name) bursts into tears as she says these words, remembering the moments of sheer terror she felt when her cousin was stabbed to death seven years ago.

Hanin managed to flee abroad, fearing she could suffer the same fate as her cousin (NH). She breaks down as she talks to the camera, telling the story of her cousin, who lived in a farming village on the outskirts of Dhi Qar in southern Iraq. NH fell in love with one of her cousins and, when her family found out, they beat and abused her. They then forced to agree to marry a different cousin. But, taking advantage of the fact that her grandmother died at the same time, she managed to escape before the wedding could take place, married her lover and moved with him to another province.

Three years after she escaped, her family began writing to her, reassuring her that they had forgiven her. Being pregnant at the time, she was delighted to receive these letters and decided to go back. But it was a trap. Her three brothers were lying in wait for her on the outskirts of the village armed with knives, says Hanin: “They stabbed her in every part of her body then took her to an archaeological site known locally as a place to expunge the shame of sinful women.” From that day on, says Hanin, she became a non-person. Even mentioning her name was taboo in family.

Iraqi tribes in all provinces, especially those in southern Iraq, wield considerable power, often more than that of the state. With the fall of the regime in 2003, this power increased, as tribes acquired a whole arsenal of weapons, including heavy weapons and anti-aircraft guns.

The Iraqi Ministry of Interior estimates that seven million weapons are in the hands of tribes, who also hold seats in the national parliament. The security forces are therefore wary about doing anything that impacts the tribes, for fear of being prosecuted or targeted. As a result, most problems and disputes that occur in the various provinces of Iraq are resolved through tribal councils rather than the courts.

The hills of “sinners” … tribal graveyards for women

Hanin says that six girls were murdered in the same village, simply because their behaviour was seen as suspicious. Some were buried in a graveyard that it was impossible to even talk about, given the power of the tribe.

While we were looking into Hanin’s story, we discovered that there are several graveyards in Nasiriyah, as well as in other provinces in the north, south and west of the country (according to the testimony of those we met while working on this investigation), where women who are the victims of honour killings are just buried without any inquiry being held, specifically to avoid any legal follow up.

One particular honour killing shocked the whole province of Nasiriyah in 2020, when a father brutally killed his two teenage daughters and buried them in the Batha desert, near the archaeological sites there.

The details of this incident were publicised at the time by the Iraqi Women’s Organisation (translator’s note: no such organisation found online. Possibly the “Iraqi Organization for Woman and Future” or “Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq”) and it was confirmed as having happened by human rights activist Rana Mansour, who herself comes from Nasiriyah. She said that this infamous event had encouraged people to talk about the graveyard in Batha and the burying of “sinners or outcasts”. Nasiriyah alone has several other burial places for victims of honour killings, each belonging to one or other of the local tribes, she said.

Regarding the murder of the two girls, Rana recalls that it happened in 2020, when the eldest ran away with someone she loved to Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, and her younger sister went with her, as she was frighted of staying behind alone. The two girls were arrested after the young man abandoned them. They were taken to a police station in Nasiriyah, where they were handed back to their father, after he promised not to harm them. But he nevertheless killed both of them in cold blood.

The “Hills of Sin” graveyard is situated in the al-Batha area west of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, about 40 kilometres from the ancient city of Ur, according to activists we spoke to.

Graveyards for immoral women across Dhi Qar

Baghdad-based lawyer and activist Zainab al-Hassan tells of how she once visited the Tall al Lahm region of Dhi Qar, on the edge of the Nasiriyah desert, the site of a famous historical cemetery. Over time it has become a place to bury babies born out of wedlock or women victims of honour killings. Zeinab describes the graveyard as “a deserted, barren place where raised graves bearing no name stretch far into the distance.”

Such graveyards are found not just in the Nasiriyah but in many provinces, where the tribe or clan uses a special place to bury “immoral women,” says

Ali Al Bayati, former spokesperson for the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights.

The Jiyan graveyard: secrets buried and stories untold

Our search for these graveyards took us to the most famous one – in Sulaymaniyah, in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan. Although this region, unlike the rest of Iraq, enjoys a fine reputation regarding rights and freedoms, the reality is quite the opposite.

We eventually found the graveyard, which lies at the back of the Tallat Siwan cemetery. Entry is forbidden, but we manage to navigate our way past the official graves to the rear section. There, as far as the eye could see, were nameless gravestones that bore only the words “Yarakaya zhiyan” – Kurdish for “stable” and “life.”

A girl was standing in front of one of the tombstones holding a small flower and a Qur’an. Then she sat down in front of one of them and, trying to hide her face,

prayed to her sister buried beneath.

Covering up the crime

In 2002, the Kurdistan Region amended its penal code to remove the exemption from punishment for murderers acting on ground of so-called “honour”, and to equate such cases with premeditated murder. But, according to Rezan Sheikh Dler – a former member of the Iraqi parliament for Sulaymaniyah district – this amendment remains “just a piece of paper,” given the power of the tribes and the fact that the “criminals” are members of local political parties.

Rezan thinks that crimes of honour will not stop and that the perpetrators will continue to escape punishment. The official statistics show that 670 people in Kurdistan Region were accused of honour killings between 2008 – 2024. And not one of them were arrested, because they were members of tribes and political parties.

According to Rezan, there are several different categories of women buried in the graveyard at Jiyan. Some were buried without anyone’s knowledge. Others were killed and their features mutilated, or they were burned and thrown onto the street so they could not be identified. After the relevant authorities have kept the body for forty days, it is buried in the graveyard with no name.

Rezan, a former member of the Iraqi parliament, is critical of the authorities for failing to arrest the people who have committed these crimes, despite the remarkable advances in security technology which the agencies in Kurdistan have at their disposal. She points out that, more often than not, these agencies empathise with the murderer rather than the victim.

Rezan Sheikh Dler

What Rezan says is confirmed by a July 2024 report from Amnesty International,

which points to widespread impunity in cases of honour crimes in Kurdistan Region and the failure of the security authorities to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.

Amnesty International documented the murders in 2023 of over 30 women, for a variety of motives, after 44 had been killed the previous year. Shokhan Hama Rashid Ahmed, a lawyer and activist specialising in these cases, points out that between 50 and 60 women die in honour killings in this region each year, according to unofficial figures. But the region’s interior ministry forbids publication of any statistics on the number of victims.

Shokhan thinks the reason the perpetrators escape punishment is the slow pace of legal proceedings, and the absence of anyone to either plead for the victim or identify the body.

Suicide: drawing a veil over the crime

Shaima (a girl from Baghdad, but not her real name) says that the family of her cousin “Fatouma” forced the girl to write a note saying she was committing suicide, aged 17. Shaima says that her aunt’s family had moved to central Baghdad from a rural province. In line with tradition, they had agreed that Fatouma should marry her cousin. But she was in love with the son of a neighbour, who would speak to her secretly on a phone she had obtained with the help of her female friends.

audio of “Shaima”

Fatouma’s brother found out about the phone and discovered letters between her and the boy. He beat her severely and then he and his father forced the girl to write a suicide note, and to then swallow a large number of pills.

[Fatouma’s suicide note]

Fatouma’s case is far from unique. Families often pretend that a woman has committed suicide to cover up a murder in the name of “honour”. “Rana”, an activist from Dhi Qar in southern Iraq, says that her province has the highest rates of suicide, but that these are actually “honour killings”.

This is also the view of Rozkan Ibrahim, a lawyer specialising in cases of honour killings in Kurdistan. She says that many cases of murder, carried out to “erase shame,” are portrayed as suicide, to cover up the murder carried out by family members themselves.

The former director of forensic medicine in Diwaniyah, Hussein Al Janabi, also confirmed that many of the cases of suicide he had seen turned out to be crimes committed to “expunge shame”. He recounts that, on one occasion, an autopsy performed on a woman who had been shot revealed that she had been pregnant, though she was unmarried. And a forensic report was submitted saying this.

Likewise, Director of Forensic Medicine in Sulaymaniyah Barzan Mohammed said that there were many cases of girls apparently killing themselves, which turn out to be murder.

Admissions from inside

A source we contacted in the Iraqi interior ministry said that up to 70 per cent of suicides were in fact honour killings. He said that, in many cases, it was tribal power that was stopping security agencies from investigating these crimes or releasing the details.

This source cited some “strange” cases that he had investigated. One was a teenage girl who was said to have hanged herself. But when he arrived on the scene, it was clear her feet were firmly on the floor.

On the same day that we contacted our source, he sent us two telegrams confirming what we had told us. On September 4, 2024, two 15-year-old girls had been murdered in the space of four hours, and their families reported that they had committed suicide. But after an inspection by the security services, it became clear that they had both been murdered to “expunge shame.”

Figures point to an unprecedented rise in suicides in Iraq in the last few years.

According to the Strategic Center for Human Rights in Iraq, over a two-and-a-half-year period (2022 to mid-2024) there were more than two thousand suicides and attempted suicides in Iraq. In 2022 there were 1,073 suicides and attempted suicides. In 2023, 700 people took their own life, and in the first six months of 2024 300 people committed suicide or tried to.

The center’s figures for the years 2016 to 2021 show 3,063 suicides or attempted suicide:

2016 – 343 suicides

2017 – 449 suicides

2018 – 519 suicides

2019 – 588 suicides

2020 – 644 suicides

2021 – 863 suicides

[graph showing: Cases of suicide for 2016 – 2021]

Health and interior ministry sources report that the overwhelming majority of suicides and attempted suicides were by women.

Murder dressed up as suicide

“Honour killings” are frequently carried out under the pretence of suicide so that the perpetrator can escape legal responsibility. Working on this investigation led us to a case that clearly showed how people use this subterfuge to deflect attention from murders they have committed. On 20 April 2022, ‘M.A.’ (aged 20) was found to have hanged herself in her bedroom while her husband was sleeping next to her in the same room. From the moment her father arrived on the scene, he had doubts that his daughter had really committed suicide, especially when her mother-in-law told him: “Bury her to erase your shame.” The sister-in-law also said to him: “Your daughter (…) has brought shame on us,” things that are often said when honour killings occur.

When the police arrived and examined the “crime scene,” according to the investigators’ documents and videos which we have managed to obtain, they found bruises and blood stains on the dead woman’s body, and her feet were touching the floor. Investigators also found bruises and scratches on the body of the husband, which aroused their suspicions.

Nevertheless, the forensic report stated that the death was most likely due to asphyxiation caused by the rope used to commit suicide, without addressing the other details mentioned in the investigator’s report. But the father did not accept the proposition that his daughter had committed suicide. He filed a complaint against the doctor who had written the forensic report and asked for the body to be exhumed and re-examined on May 29 of the same year.

أكد التقرير الجديد -الذي حصلنا على نسخة منه- وجود الكدمات والخدوش في جميع أجزاء جسد الضحية، بما فيها أعضاؤها التناسلية، إلى جانب وجود بقايا بشرية تحت أظافرها. ومع توثيق هذه الأدلة، توجه الأب إلى القضاء الذي عين خبيراً جنائياً أظهرت تحقيقاته ضعف احتمالية الانتحار، لأن المسافة بين سطح الغرفة والأرض غير كافية لتحقق الانتحار، وكانت قدما القتيلة تلامسان الأرض، بالإضافة إلى أن الزوج برّر آثار الخدوش على جسمه بممارسة “العلاقة الحميمة” معها عند الساعة 3:45 فجراً، أيّ قبل أقل من أربع ساعات من انتحارها.

[court verdict]

The court subsequently concluded that it was a case of murder, not death by suicide, and sentenced the husband to life imprisonment. The anti-corruption court in Baghdad also fined the forensic doctor who had drawn up the original report one million dinars (about $650).

**[sentence of life imprisonment passed on husband]**

Handing the victim to the murderer

Most of the murder cases we have documented appear to be of girls under the legal age of majority (less than 18). This points to a legal loophole that allows girls to be handed back their guardians, who have no hesitation in murdering them in cold blood, supposedly to “erase shame.”

The amended Juvenile Welfare Act No. 76 of 1983, stipulates that people under the age of 18 must be returned to their guardians. Article 23 of the law give police the power to search for runaways from their families who are under the legal age, and also to return to their families those the police find in places of delinquency, such as cafes, cinemas, discos, and bars. Article 24 of the same law stipulates that a minor is considered a fugitive if they leave their guardian’s home without a legitimate reason.

Amnesty International’s report, which was issued in July 2024, discusses a similar case of two sisters – one 17 and the other 19 – who were killed in Kurdistan Region. Their bodies were found after they had been handed over to their father, who had signed pledge that was not legally binding, according to the report.

Lawyer and judicial expert Mohammed Al-Qadi criticises the executive authorities for not taking seriously the fate of runaways or even looking into the reasons why they flee, only to be stopped by the police and handed over to the murderer.

Director of Community Police in the Ministry of Interior, Brigadier General Ali Ajami, did not deny that girls who run away are handed back to their guardians, but he insisted that the police acted cautiously and confidentially and according to procedures that the judiciary are informed of, so as to safeguard the family structure as well as the lives of the girls.

The response of the tribes

We reached out to the leaders of a number of tribes, but most refused either to talk or to comment on the findings if this investigation.

Sheikh Adnan Al-Danbous, head of the Kenana clan and a former member of the Iraqi parliament, told us that these crimes are not talked about in Iraq, because of the religious and tribal nature of Iraqi society.

He said that the victim is usually killed merely on “suspicion,” without any evidence being presented or investigation undertaken, and sometimes the girl is killed in such a way as to not attract attention. Among the examples he gave were girls being burned or electrocuted, or poisoned so as to make the crime look like suicide. On the question of the secret graveyards, Al-Danbous preferred to say nothing, because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Bassem Al-Hajami, Secretary-General of the Arab Tribal Cooperation Council, brought up the question of what he called “the horror of marital infidelity or adultery,” which he said was an issue of crucial importance in an Oriental society, governed principally by tribal custom and religious teachings second.

He categorically denied that there were any hidden or tribal graveyards where victims were buried, insisting that “honour killings” happened the world over, and that in Iraq the rates were actually lower than the average.

But the former spokesperson for the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, Ali Al Bayati, made clear that crimes to “expunge shame” were widespread across all of Iraq, and that the country was witnessing a sharp increase in incidence. He pointed out that figures show at least 150 women and girls die each year in honour killings, and that “the actual number is even higher.”

Meanwhile, a report by Human Rights Watch, based on a statement by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, indicates that there were about four thousand honour killings in Iraq between 1991 to 2001.

Activists in numerous rights organisations in Iraq are of the view that the published numbers of murders “on the pretext of honour” are much lower than the actual figure, considering the incidence of other crimes that take place in complete secrecy.

Legal loopholes that need to be closed

Paragraph 409 of the Iraqi Penal Code No. 111 of 1969 states that”

Any person who surprises his wife in the act of adultery or finds his girlfriend in bed with her lover and kills them immediately or one of them or assaults one of them so that he or she dies or is left permanently disabled is punishable by a period of detention not exceeding 3 years. It is not permissible to exercise the right of legal defense against any person who uses this excuse nor do the rules of aggravating circumstance apply against him.”

Paragraph 41 (1) of the law states:

“There is no crime if the act (beating) is committed while exercising a legal right. The following are considered to be in exercise of a legal right: 1) The punishment of a wife by her husband, the disciplining by parents and teachers of children under their authority, within limits prescribed by law or by custom.”

Many activists and human rights organisations maintain that what underpins the continuation and even expansion of “honour killings” is the failure to amend Paragraphs 41 and 409 of the Penal Code. Lawyer and activist Marwa Abdel Reda argues that these two paragraphs have justified women being murdered and perpetrators escaping punishment. She says they are not in accordance with the law or the constitution, since Sharia law stipulates the presence of four witnesses, while Article 14 of the Iraqi Constitution states that “Iraqis are equal before the law, regardless of race or sex.” So why should the killing of a woman be considered an “honour crime,” while killing a man is an unqualified criminal act?

Mohammed al-Qadi, a judicial expert, said that the law stipulates that the perpetrator be caught by surprise and in flagrante delicto. This means that the brother, father or husband must walk in on the woman or girl while she is in the act of adultery. What actually happens, however, is that they stalk the girl based on mere suspicion.

This report was completed with the support of ARIJ.

The graveyards of “bad women” On the pretext of acting to defend honour, criminals in Iraq are escaping punishment thanks to the power of tribes and local tradition